Main Discussion Area > Cooking Forum
Wild Berry Wine
TrevorM:
Alcohol changes the refraction, but it can still be used. If you just did a start and end reading it wouldn't be pretty inaccurate, but daily like you do would be fine. In fact it might even be more accurate since the readings are a lot clearer. As a side note, alcohol does also effect hydrometer readings it's just more linear and so easier to correct.
I would also make the point that a larger part of taking the readings is to see how it's progressing. Unless you're going commercial your ABV is more a nice to know and you really only need a ballpark figure.
le0n:
^^ interesting.
i was taking daily readings in the primary, afterward, it was weekly.
le0n:
Started the other batch yesterday evening:
The color was coming on pretty good:
However, when I added the three crushed Potassium Metabisulfite tablets, it instantly turned to a shade of brown:
(Note the color change when I added a very small amount of sodium barcarbonate into the measuring cup.)
This is due to the chemicals in the fruit reacting to the pH level changes. The sodium bicarbonate raised the pH even more and brought the color to a marvelous brown.
The must needed more acid, so I was relying on the Pectic Enzyme to pull it more from the fruit over night.
So nothing else was added to the container, and in the morning it looked like this:
le0n:
Ok. I finally got everything squeezed away from the pulp:
Being that I added 2 quarts of water to the cooking pot, I ended up getting 1.5 gallons of juice from my fruit.
It was still a deep red, but it was still hovering around the brown hues:
sugar time; 12lbs:
Dissolving some tartaric acid to add to the vessel to lower the pH:
Note the color change in the jar.
SG reading 1.109 SG Corrected:
I finally got to this point at 2:30am:
TrevorM:
Nice work! Glad you were able to save that color.
Navigation
[0] Message Index
[#] Next page
[*] Previous page
Go to full version